


The Tower

by AdelaCathcart



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst and Romance, Bath Sex, Canon Compliant, F/M, Marisa is a mermaid, Missing Scene, Sensory Deprivation, misery fic for the plague year, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25680355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: Scummed with soap and saline water, she was slippery as a fish when he caught her in his arms. She was embracing him with so much force he had to reach out and steady himself against the wall, but in a moment he thought better of it and let her pull him down. Disembodied hands were peeling off his clothes, her disembodied mouth was alive on his; he slid into the bath and it was as hot as blood, obscuring the delineation of one body from another, so that in the overflowing water it seemed that there was only one ecstatic, boundless creature, ferociously loving itself, in defiance of oblivion.[A missing scene fromThe Amber Spyglass.]
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	The Tower

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place during "Midnight," Chapter 28 of _The Amber Spyglass_. I have taken pains to make it fit seamlessly within the original work, and to imitate Pullman's style as closely as my ability would allow. If you notice anything I overlooked, or if you have thoughts about how to make it more Pullmanesque, don't hesitate to get in touch!
> 
> Whether or not you have suggestions, please do let me know what you think, I love to hear from you. :)
> 
> “These two mortals are similarly saved from psychological destruction and liberated from the prison of their prideful egocentricity. Symbolically speaking, they had built for themselves a towering edifice of rational thought by which they hoped to rise above the mundane world. Fearing the chaotic complexities and individual responsibility involved in moral choice, they had retreated into a rigid system of philosophy by whose concrete general laws all decisions were automatically made.... Whereas formerly they were slaves to their devilish instinct, in the tower they became prisoners of their equally devilish intellect. Like Satan himself, their intellectual pride had driven them too high, and like him they must inevitably fall. Perhaps, like him also, they will bring with them new illumination.” —Sallie Nichols, _Jung and the Tarot_
> 
> "As I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other - child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death. But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.” —Daniel Keyes, _Flowers for Algernon_
> 
> "I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph." —Jack Gilbert, "Failing and Falling"

The Chariot would be upon them within hours, and Lord Asriel was facing King Ogunwe across the table scattered with papers, listening to the final tally of their munitions. “We have just received three hundred armored bears from our own world,” the king reported, “in addition to six more witch clans comprising fourteen hundred warriors. Speaking of our airborne forces, nine hundred fifty gyropters have been fully outfitted with ordnance, and the rest will be completed before nightfall. Seventeen zeppelins are ready to launch, two need minor repairs. Need I remind you, we’re still short one intention craft.”

“Hm? Only a prototype,” Lord Asriel said absently, scanning his military commander's notes.

“Which left us with only four. See to it you don’t let her steal another.”

“I think that’s quite unlikely.”

“Asriel, I see the way you look at each other. It’s like watching Salome dance before King Herod.”

Lord Asriel laughed. “As bad as that?” Ogunwe nodded. “Well, don’t let it worry you, my friend. There’s no harm she can do that I can’t repair.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Incredibly, the work was ahead of schedule, so he retired to his private chamber to change his stale clothes, wash, and perhaps even rest. When he entered he found Lyra’s mother asleep in his camp bed.

He’d never bothered to assign her quarters, and it seemed she never thought to ask for any. She had stripped down to a white chemise and curled on top of the dark blankets, a slim pale crescent like a new moon. Her hair was unstyled and longer than he’d ever seen it, and even in sleep her lovely face looked sad and wasted. The hollows around her eyes were blotchy red. Her monkey dæmon’s hand lay on her cheek.

A flood of tenderness blindsided him, unfurling like a new and urgent sprout bursting from a long-neglected seed. There was real joy in their coupling once. It was manna from heaven, incredible to discover, wild honey sucked straight from the resonant hive, dangerous and precious. Not long after that, they learned to grind their rage to powder on one another’s bones. There had been a time when he regarded them as almost a single entity—a chymical wedding, interdependent components of the elixir of life itself—and long years after when it wasn’t love anymore but only desire, obsession, anger, resentment, sweet wine turned to savory vinegar. Now, with shocking suddenness and almost too late, it was love again.

Astonished, he dropped to his knees and, with a delicacy his hands had forgotten, brushed the soft hair away from her lips. A little frown appeared between her brows, and then she was instantly alert, blinking up into his face.

“Asriel? What’s wrong, what’s happened?”

He opened his mouth to explain but then closed it again. It didn’t matter: she recognized the look in his eyes. She knew it very well. He took one of her hands in both of his, running his thumbs over the birdlike bones, and then, impulsively, brought it to his lips.

“Oh,” she said softly.

They looked at each other in silence for a long moment before she spoke again.

“Why did you come get me, at Saint-Jean-les-Eaux? It took you hours. I’d already been interrogated, there was no more harm I could have done you. And it’s not as if you need me here.”

“For the same reason I had you removed from that cave. If I’d left you alone there you would have been killed.”

She sniffed, closing her eyes wearily. “I can’t see how it would have mattered much.”

“Impossible woman,” he muttered, too tired to laugh.

Her abstracted gaze wandered over the high black walls, but the monkey was watching Lord Asriel intently, his bright eyes curious and calculating. There were many times, not so long ago, that he’d clutched the little beast against his heart, and nearly as many when he would have liked to slap him but didn’t dare. They hadn’t touched in years. In the intention craft, while the woman lay asleep under his arm, her dæmon had crept along the back of the seat and lightly caressed the hair at his nape, in gratitude, he supposed, before scrambling back to the safety of her lap. Shamed now by that cautious touch and this wary, searching look, Lord Asriel stared at the small hand that lay in his.

“You should bathe,” he said finally. “You’re filthy. Look at your nails.”

He didn’t wait for a response but crossed to the small washroom, where ingeniously-constructed plumbing siphoned water from a hot spring deep within the mountain into a bath hewn directly from the stone. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, stirring the water with his hand, inhaling the mineral scent of the steam.

“All the comforts of home,” she observed from the doorway.

“The angels built this fortress in a matter of months,” he told her, sitting back on his heels. “They move through time very differently than we do, using powers we can’t hope to comprehend, and yet even for them it’s a remarkable achievement. We have facilities here to billet and equip a thousand armies, an unimaginable variety of races.”

“I suppose one extra prisoner is no great hardship for you, then.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” he said, scowling. Taking her hand, his voice low and hoarse, he continued: “We will win this war. The Kingdom of Heaven will fall. And we’ll create a Heaven of our own, here, with no monarchs, no masters, no gods. No more centuries of ignorance and darkness. We’ll make this world exactly as we want it.” He paused, weighing the words. “It could be ours, Marisa, yours and mine, if…”

“If?”

 _Even unto the half of my kingdom_ , he thought ruefully. _Ogunwe will like that_. He folded her fingers in his. “If you would stay.”

She said nothing. She was eyeing him with unconcealed skepticism. He added wearily: “Go on. Get in, and I’ll wash your hair.”

She made a little gesture of resignation, and lifted the slip gingerly over her head, her movements uncharacteristically stiff and slow. He resisted the impulse to help her undress. He could see now that her body was covered with scratches; bruises had formed across her arms and back. She lowered herself carefully into the water as if she were made of glass, and sighed, leaning her head against the cool black stone.

Gathering a sea sponge, a horn cup, and a bar of hard yellow soap from the basin, Lord Asriel perched on a low stool beside the bath. He soaked the sponge and wrung it over her hair. “You’ve taken quite a beating,” he noted calmly. “Apparently the Magisterium wasn’t as eager to have you back as you had hoped.”

She laughed softly. “MacPhail… I was trying to keep him away from the bomb.”

“You fought him?”

“Yes.”

“It seems he got the better of you.” He worked the soap into a lather in the sponge, and began to massage the thick suds into her scalp.

“But Lyra’s safe, isn’t she? The alethiometrist said…”

“Yes, she and the boy are unharmed, for now. We’ll know more soon; Mr. Basilides is preparing a full report. Metatron will be looking for them too, unless we manage to destroy him first. And that will be difficult if we can’t lure him away from the Mountain.”

“But the bomb _did_ go off?”

“It opened an immense abyss beneath the worlds, and all the Dust from every world is being pulled into it. Inside the abyss Dust—consciousness, love, independent thought, everything worth living for—disappears irrevocably. It’s simply obliterated. Tip your head back,” he added, scooping warm water in the horn cup and pouring it over her brow. Little clouds of suds spread across the bath’s dark surface.

She opened her eyes then, and he became suddenly aware of how close her face was to his. He could feel her rapid breathing on his mouth. The weariness had fled from her expression: she looked young, lively, and passionate, as she had when they’d first met. Her voice was trembling with excitement.

“Angels are made of Dust, aren’t they?” she whispered.

He knew at once what she meant. Before he could tell her so, a wave of warm water sloshed into his lap, and she grabbed his head and kissed him greedily.

Scummed with soap and saline water, she was slippery as a fish when he caught her in his arms. She rose to her knees, reaching for him, soaking his fine shirt with the moisture that clung to her breast, and that thin membrane between them somehow amplified the exquisite intimacy of skin pressing on skin. She was embracing him with so much force he had to reach out and steady himself against the wall, but in a moment he thought better of it and let her pull him down. Disembodied hands were peeling off his clothes, her disembodied mouth was alive on his; he slid into the bath and it was as hot as blood, obscuring the delineation of one body from another, so that in the overflowing water it seemed that there was only one ecstatic, boundless creature, ferociously loving itself, in defiance of oblivion.

He was watching her eyes, glittering and urgent above him in the dark. So quietly that he might not have heard if he hadn’t felt the movement of her lips, she murmured, “I’ve always, always loved you… Do you know that?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Asriel…” Her head drooped low over him, and the rhythmic lapping water spread her hair across his chest like sea foam. They lay together, saying nothing, while the lamp burned out and the water grew cold.

In the perfect darkness, buoyant in the salt water, Mrs. Coulter had the impression of floating in empty space, of flying or falling through a limitless, starless night. It was peaceful, she thought. She knew Lord Asriel was in her arms because she could hear him breathing, but as long as she kept utterly still there was no way for her to know where he ended and she began, and she felt a profound longing to lay her faithless heart over his strong, brave one, and teach it once and for all to keep time. Suddenly a terrible fear shook her—what if she were to feel for that steady pulse and find it silent? In response to the thought, the tranquil eternity that had surrounded them closed in on her: the heavy walls were mere inches away on every side, and the world became a tomb. She sat up forcefully, tearing at the wedge of wood blocking the sluice, and as the water gurgled away she climbed out of the bath so quickly her head swam.

She wrenched open the door and stumbled into Lord Asriel’s bedchamber, where large windows admitted the faint glow of a sky streaked with violet-black clouds. His snow-leopard dæmon was sprawled calmly near the doorway, with the monkey huddled close to her for warmth; when she burst in both dæmons started. Far off in the western sky she could see the Clouded Mountain, a massive thunderhead lit ominously from within. Intermittently it hurled bolts of bluish lightning to Earth, and in those bright flashes Mrs. Coulter saw that the adamant tower was surrounded by angels.

Some were patrolling, and others stood guard along the battlements, and their ethereal forms were difficult for her to make out, but now she saw that they were watching her with indifferent curiosity. She was naked, but of course so were they; it hardly mattered. A crack of thunder rattled the rain-dashed windowpanes. Distantly, she could hear a sound like a glass harp, haunting and delicate. She realized it was coming from the angels: they were singing.

Clearing his throat so as not to startle her, Lord Asriel wrapped a snow-white peshtemal around her shoulders and half-guided, half-carried her back to his bed. Her teeth were chattering. He added more coals to the iron stove, and then lay down beside her. Those angels who happened to observe them there looked on with gentle envy, recalling the great joys of human flesh, now lost to them forever. 

A polite knock rang at the door. “My lord,” an orderly called, “Your high commanders are assembling in the meeting room.”

Lord Asriel sat up so his voice would project clearly through the heavy wood. “Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

The clock in the next room was sounding the hour, and as he dressed Mrs. Coulter was watching him thoughtfully, blinking slow, swaying from exhaustion where she sat. He cupped the back of her neck and moved to kiss her forehead, but she laid her hand over his, holding it in place, and tipped her head up to meet his lips with hers. The taste of her, thin and wild like ocean water, and the soft wet noises in the shared well of their mouths were the closest thing he could remember to a kind of peace, and he lived only there until the clock’s chimes stopped, and silence overtook the tower. Then he stood, and without a backwards glance, went into the meeting room where his war council waited, and shut the door behind him.

It was midnight.

**Author's Note:**

> Asriel quotes from Mark 22-24: "And when the daughter of Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, even unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist."


End file.
